Oh, the irony

Geez, could you POSSIBLY rip-off the design of the P-3 Orion any more than that?
Uhhh...the Coot has been around since Christ was a Corporal, and Moses was the Platoon Sergeant. Like since the late 40's...

More likely that LM took some cues from them (the Ruskies) when they designed the Electra/P-3 Orion...
 
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Uhhh...the Coot has been around since Christ was a Corporal, and Moses was the Platoon Sergeant. Like since the late 40's...

More likely that LM took some cues from them (the Ruskies) when they designed the Electra/P-3 Orion...

Well, you are somewhat right, in that they may or may not have gotten cues from LM, but it did not happen the other way around as far as I can tell. Your post got me to thinking though, so I did some looking into it:

The IL-20 was developed from the IL-18. The IL-18 design began in DEC 1955, and it first flew in JUL 1957. The IL-20 didn't make it's first flight until MAR 1968.

The P-3 was derived from the L-188 Electra, which began design in JUN 1955 (6 mos. BEFORE the IL-18) and first flew in DEC 1957 (6 mos. AFTER the IL-18). The idea to make P-3s out of Electras began in 1957, and the P-3 first flew in NOV 1959.

So I learned a thing a two, and it is quite possible that neither is the result of copying the other, yet it is still possible that the Russians did copy it.. After what they did with the Tu-4, literally disassembling a B-29 and reverse-engineering it piece-by-piece to an exact copy, it is understandable why one might jump to the conclusion that I did!
 
I stand corrected. I was referring to the original Il-18, which was later scrapped and replaced by the Coot. I'd imagine there was probably a lot of data transfers both ways back then. It was the McCarthy period after all...